City Council - Regular Meeting

Lay back with my mind on my money and my money.

We're on.

We're on, okay. We didn't hear the music. We didn't hear the music. It was like, we're really looking forward to jam to that for you guys in the opening. But yeah, we're so excited to be here with this show and Money & Mind, welcome to Money & Mind. Before we start, we just wanted to share a little bit about our creative process for the song and the title. We definitely talked about it for a bit, trying to come up with a good title that really inspired us on what we want to try to achieve here with this song. And that was a perfect title. And then it just came to mind with a Snoop Dogg. So, Jamie, what do you think about our process?

I mean, we were talking about how, you know, money is... you know, always intertwined and it's always on your mind. I mean, and you had said, hey, why don't we just call it money and mind? And I was like, yeah, that's great. I was like, there's a song. And the song, I was like, it's like mind on my money and my money on my mind or something. I was like, who sings that? Snoop Dogg? Yes. And she's like, yeah. So I looked it up on my phone and sure enough, it was gin and juice.

And I was like, OK, let's.

let's go for it sounds good whatever it's also with the times too and um i mean it's more of our times back in the day but yes um so basically we created this show um because we believe that everybody deserves access to financial education and the opportunity to have and build a secure future the goal of money in mind is really to help viewers gain like the knowledge and the tools and the confidence to really help them make better financial decisions, help them feel empowered to create the future that they want. Not everybody wants to look through thousands and thousands of pages about financial literacy. It's a lot of information, and I love looking at it, so might as well present it to everybody that I can.

Yes. So money impacts us every day, whether we're thinking about it or not. But we aren't brought up learning about it. You know, like we do have some curriculum about it, but it's hard for us to talk about it every day and understand how to apply some of the things that we learn and and also be able to discuss it with one another. So this is a way for us to be able to create a show that is conversational, it's honest and open, and hopefully, you know, people can be better equipped to have discussions around their friends and family and be supported.

Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest things is giving people the confidence and the empowerment. Start talking about it. Money shouldn't feel intimidating, even though it's technically taboo. But one's net worth is not, it doesn't equate to your self-worth. And I think the more we talk about money and it will be less taboo and people will be able to help other people understand it better. So yeah, I guess I'll get right into my story, my taboo. I don't mind talking about it. I had a lot of hiccups along the way. So basically, when I was younger, I had to work from an early age to earn money for the things that I wanted. I needed new school clothes, I had to work for it. And that's my first concept of money was earning something to, you know, make sure that you have the essentials. It didn't really save too much when I was younger. And I did have one class in school. It was half typing and then the other half was learning how to write a check and learning how to balance a checkbook. But that was about it. There's not really much out there. for education-wise. And then, sure enough, you enter college blind. And I very much entered college blind. I had zero understanding of interest, credit scores, anything like that. I took out my student loans. I took out credit cards to be able to buy books and pay for tuition, I think, one year or two. So it racked up really quickly for me. And I only paid minimums. A lot of people don't know the interest rates and how that works. So when you only pay minimums, you're kind of digging yourself a deeper hole. And I did that. And I also bought my first vehicle and made all the wrong decisions. I brought it back and didn't realize there was negative equity, all that jazz. And all of this ended up me filing for bankruptcy. Hence taboo. Nobody wants to talk about it. I don't care. Honestly, it helped me later in life. I went to school for graphic design. Didn't really do it, you know. Eventually, years go by, a lot of different careers. I ended up being in banking for about seven years, and I loved it. I loved being able to help people. I helped people with loans. Credit, scores, all sorts of fun things. Checking savings accounts. I help their kids. People build trust in me and that's what I liked about doing it. They felt like family. When I'm working at the bank, I finally was introduced to financial literacy and we went into the community and did a lot of financial literacy events where we taught either kids or businesses and their companies, employees about different aspects of financial literacy. And I absolutely loved it. That was a real passion of mine. It still is to this day, hence the show. And then I discovered life insurance through the bank, like learning about it. I was going to get my life insurance license. And my journey kind of shifted a little bit because I went and I saw this presentation that kind of blew my mind. It was completely different than what I learned at the bank. I learned about compounding interest, even though I did learn that at the bank. But there's, you know, other things that make it more digestible to the human brain. Doing so, I ended up leaving the bank even though I loved it and I loved my customers. I left the bank and I became an independent life insurance agent. I have my license for life insurance and I work in accounting at Green Mountain Electric Supply. So, you know, shout out to them, they're great. But, you know, all those things just, it brought me to where I'm at. I did a lot of presentations in my community at Northgate. I did some financial literacy events for them. in the process of doing something, planning something for the kids, because I really think this should start in schools. And yeah, so that's a lot about me in some small amount of time. But I do just love helping my neighbors and my community understand life insurance and financial literacy, everything that goes along with it, because there's a lot to it. I've recently helped a lot of my community members with raising their credit scores, helping file paperwork with Social Security, helping with applying for loans, all sorts of stuff. But, you know, pet, what about you? That's enough about me.

That's a lot. No, I could listen to your experiences all day. Yeah, so my journey started in 1981. My family resettled here in St. Johnsbury, and I am considered a long time Vermonter. Definitely left the state and went on to have a degree in anthropology and public administration, but I moved here back in Vermont to raise my family. Definitely see myself as a long time Vermonter. And how I got into financial services is I became an entrepreneur. And I worked in nonprofit and government for most of my career, which was amazing and wonderful, and I learned a lot. But becoming an entrepreneur, like owning my own business and then having to navigate like independent of an institution, my finances, my insurance and retirement was what made me really get interested in financial services myself personally, so that I could further manage it and And yeah, I'm not perfect in it, but I do love the field. It's such an expansive field. And life insurance came upon me from a friend, and it was really something that hit me, just like Jamie, learning about compound interest and understanding the different industries, because that's the thing about life insurance and working with people. is that you have to know the other financial services fields. You are connecting with people on a personal level and understanding their savings, their dreams, their health, their family future. And so I really like that personal touch with it. And due to my background in public service, it really resonated with me to make an impact that way. So I definitely feel that this TV show is something that I've been thinking about for the past year because in going across and meeting people, not everybody is versed in understanding how the different fields connect to each other and also how they resonate within each of the financial service fields. So I'm really happy with Jamie to have this show. And also have it be personal, but it's not something that we want to bring boring speakers or subjects to you, but how to make it be more accessible and simplify what financial services is. So today's show, we're just going to go and break down a little bit of the big picture. then you know like really see if we can get an engagement from the group to like the people watching so that's not not just us talking and building a show but that it's really a community that we can build to discuss these forums so yeah over to you definitely don't want to talk the entire time as you can see I might be a little red in the face I can see but

There is, so financial services is a huge slew of categories. different licenses are involved with different things. We are, you know, we're life insurance certified. It doesn't mean that we're experts on everything. Our plan is to bring in people that are experts in their field that can, you know, shed some light on some of these concepts that are definitely more digestible to Everybody. So, I mean, just a high level of the different types of financial services. Everybody knows about banking. Whether or not people all use banking, it's completely up to them. Not fine by me either way. But banking is usually like your deposits. That's where your paychecks are going. That's where you save money. That's where you use your debit card. There's a huge encompassment in banking. I don't want to get into all of it. There's of course insurance and protection, life insurance, health insurance, casualty, auto. There's a slew of different insurances that help protect you and your wealth. Estate planning and taxes. Taxes is a huge thing. Always seek out a tax professional if you are having questions about specific things. We are hoping to have somebody on the show to speak about that. Estate planning is something that also is helpful for the legacy that you're going to be leaving to either your children or even a donation or whatnot. with wills and trusts, excuse me, and navigating those different types of things. One of the biggest ones that even I myself to this day still do not fully understand is investments and wealth management. Stocks, bonds, portfolio management, you know, stock market and all the different things that go along with that.

We do put a disclaimer on and say that with each of these industries, they take a special license. So everybody's certified in their own individual field. And with the stocks, it deals with the stock market, and so they need a FINRA. So it's more of a financial... Yes, it's a securities license.

They do need that. Okay. And then like real estate and lending, like mortgages, home loans, auto loans, any kind of type of loan that you need. Personal loans are also with the bank. But and, you know, depending if you're an entrepreneur, there's also business financial services. So it's a huge encompassed area. I know specifically at the bank, I worked with normal deposit and savings relationships as well as home equity lines of credit. And I worked with a mortgage officer. I myself was not in mortgage, but understanding those certain things helps to navigate things easier. So if you understand all the processes of like even a real estate transaction is, you know, it's crazy how long they take and it's very confusing and overwhelming to a lot of people. So having at least a baseline and understanding of it will be good for people. Business financial services is huge for anybody that wants to start their own business. We're in Vermont, we're a huge small business community. I would reach out to your local banking people, they can definitely help. Also the small business administration is great. But these are just, you know, very high level different aspects. My cousin, he is, he works down south and he works in investments and, you know, he has a CPA. Sorry, I don't even know the acronym. It's not a CPA, but he has, you know, all the wealth management processes. offering different products and solutions in that realm.

There's a lot of resources out there. There is a ton. Especially here in Burlington, we have one of the most robust business development departments through the city of Burlington where people from other counties will come here too and so seek out yeah definitely local support and business development there's like Vermont is really a close-knit community so if you start at the state there's a lot of resources that you can tap into and all of this yeah and that's one of the things that we're trying to help with is so you don't have to you know read piles and piles of

paperwork or internet articles on this subject matter because it's all encompassing. I know one big thing that I learned, at least in the life insurance realm, is it touches upon all of these, which I had no idea. I was just like, life insurance, what do you, I'm not going to die anytime soon. I mean, I You know, that's also taboo to talk about. You know, life insurance is a huge taboo topic. Nobody wants to talk about death or anything like that. But the amount of times you see GoFundMe pages, it's sad. But, you know, preparing for our legacy, which is, you know, and preparing for the worst.

Yeah, I would say that it's the biggest takeaway that you could have from our show is like understanding it's not a silo process and that, you know, like you could see the systems of how financial services can benefit you and how you can relate it to your own lifestyle. One of the biggest takeaways to that, like where the money and mind comes from is just like the psychology relationship that you have with your money. Because if you want to improve understanding how money works, you've got to build your relationship. with your money. So just like a friendship or a family member, it's just like you need to work into your relationship with your money and understand, check in on it, be able to know what is it doing for the good of you of saving and spending. How is it How's the activity every day? Then that way you can be able to build that rapport. I am also guilty to be like, I don't even want to look at my bank account. And the balance sometimes, because it's scary, but in order for you to develop a strong understanding of how to build it and where is it that you can save, then that's the better that you'll have to track your goals and achievements. And then understand the institutions that you have around financial services that you can use. like really look at their strategies and tools that they have too. And that's what we're excited about, like later on getting into, you know, discussion with like the experts and also the audience that we have here.

Right. And I mean, the audiences can be very broad. I've seen a spectrum. Working at the bank, you see a spectrum of, you know, I don't like to say it, like low, middle class, upper class, things like that, as far as value of money, how much they have is really realistic into what they can do with their finances. So a lot of financial advisors won't even speak to you unless you have 50 grand to invest. the likelihood of that happening for a lot of the people that I know in my community is very few and far between. So getting the word out to those people, maybe not the more well-off, I'm not, you know, how do I say it, I'm not going against anybody else. I just wanna make it more accessible to middle class, lower class families that really do need to be able to provide a stable, secure future.

Yeah, there's a lot of barriers, whether it's the institution or the individual. But the institution has been designed for like upper, you know, like navigation in taxes and investments and everything. But that doesn't mean that the everyday people can look at Hey, what am I spending my money on? $5 of coffee and breakfast or a snack. Can you take that and change the behavior to put that $5 investment every day or $20 a month into investing a long-term strategy? And so that's where we want to make it accessible to talk about these different strategies. You may not have 100 grand, but in looking at 20 bucks a month that you could put away, and then the compound interest of that grows, and then before you know it, 10 years later, you have like 20, 30 grand. I'm not doing the math, but. You can see what we're talking about here. And that's where we want to have these discussions so that there is, breaks down that barrier within individuals too, you know, where they're just like, I don't have any money to invest. I don't like, but let's look at our habits and let's have a discussion and understand the services are out there, the tools, you know, to be able to have your money and mine work for you.

Yeah, 100%. And I mean, I can even give a personal example. I will, I'll throw myself under the bus, you know, however you want to say it, but I was really one that was dreading going to the mailbox. I didn't want to see the bills I had. I was living, I was living, still kind of am living paycheck to paycheck. But in a different sense, I have a more understanding of how my habits were dealing or not dealing with my finances, such as Friday comes, hey, I got my paycheck. What bills need to be paid that I have to, you know, have. I need a roof over my head. I need to make sure you pay the rent. Credit cards, oh, those can wait because I need to make sure I have a vehicle to get to work to make the money. Those kind of things. But in doing so, the credit card debt just kept piling up, piling up, piling up. And then the interest. So it's like you're paying minimum payment, but your interest is $100, and it's not adding up. So I kind of switched it. I did a lot of different, like, I did some self-research, different ways of budgeting that worked better for me. And I'll go more into detail about this when we get into, like, budgeting.

Our next episode is going to be about know your money, build your relationship. 100%. So it's going to go into budgeting.

But, yeah, my biggest thing was I took away, like... just having like auto transfers. And I have a lot of things on auto pay now. But yeah, I really, I think the biggest thing we want to do here is financial education. It helps, you know, reduce financial stress and believe me, once you're stressed about it, you don't even want to look at your bank account.

Yeah, so it's about building confidence. I definitely have been more confident in the past year since I started as a agent in life insurance and now I'm a broker. And so it's opening me up to a wider discussion with other financial services and definitely being an entrepreneur and being a small business, local small businesses has its challenges of like, you know, you're everything, you're like the, from the executive CEO to the worker. And it is something that has really helped me to develop a better confidence to it. And so that's where I meet other people who are in financial services like Jamie. Being able to share some of the strategies that we use and tips is definitely life changing because you feel that independence. The best thing is that you know what questions to ask. Because before it was just like, I don't know what questions to ask. But now being able to take charge when I go to the bank or when I'm like, You know, doing work with investing like I have the questions and that's the empowerment empowerment we in financial services want to share with you all.

Yeah. And I think another thing that will be a later topic, too, is fraud. Fraud is a huge thing. But yeah, just a couple of things that we're going to be talking about going forward. And then, you know, We are asking people to, you know, join the topic, you know, let us know what you want to hear. If you have questions, if we don't know the answer, we're going to find you a person that can answer them for you.

Yep. So let's let's start off with some action. Can we like buy our next show? Like we would love to hear from you on these actions of I have to put my glasses on of three financial goals that you like are inspiring to do. It can be big. It's OK to plan big.

yeah so like where do you want to be in five years do you want to be buying a home uh starting a business do you want to be debt free uh you never know uh are you planning for a family do you want to retire comfortably those are types of things to think about when you're thinking about the three financial goals that you have and you can um there's some some questions um it's just like uh mine

Yeah, there's some questions about like that you can put into is like, how do I spend my money and how do I save it? And so those can like look at some of the habits that you have to get to your financial goal and how to improve it. And overall, like, what do you want to learn when it comes to discussion of money this year?

Yeah. This really is gonna be the beginning of your financial journey, I hope, if you're watching. But our hope of the show is really to give you the tools and the mindset to achieve, again, confidence, empowerment for your financial life. It doesn't happen overnight. My story definitely tells you that. And I'm still working on it every day. But it doesn't happen overnight. It happens through education, consistent actions, and making informed decisions over time. It doesn't happen right off the bat. And you're going to mess up. Everybody makes mistakes. And then you just try something new because what works for one person may not work for you. And that's OK. There's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah. So, yeah, like what else do we have to share with the people?

Yeah, no, I definitely want to keep going on this and let's definitely want to share. So when's our next episode, huh? Did we write it down on here?

Yes. It is every third month, Thursday, 525. And we don't have the date of it.

Yeah. Well, it's every third Thursday. Third Thursday. So not third month. So every month, third Thursday, live at 525. And our next one is August 20th. And it's going to be building a relationship with your money. We'll be talking a little bit more about like savings and budgeting, really getting to know. But you can call during the show. I think we're going to have some calls. And, you know, even call and share something, you know, your tips, if you'd like with us, we'd be happy to hear them. But anyway, thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you again.

Money in mind. We'd love to have you back. Please share the word. We're on Facebook. You can reach out to us, too, on that. But, yeah, stay tuned. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great day.